Social media… what a buzzword. It’s grown, exploded, and ushered in a new paradigm in marketing. Kind of.

It seems like everyday there’s a new social media guru, someone to tell you how to use your Facebook, when to Tweet, or berate you for not having a FourSquare.

The social media industry, in its current form, is not sustainable.

Why do I say that? Well, two main reasons stand out.

First, it’s not easy to assign or forecast ROI from social media. Without being able to at least estimate return, managers have a hard time justifying investment.

It’s not a large issue right now because social media is still new, it’s exciting, and everyone’s doing it. Once the allure wears off and people will begin to ask about profit.

For social media to continue to grow we must find a way to directly relate investment to sales.

Secondly, social media is full of “experts”. There’s not enough actionable research and too much chest beating.

The number of fans you have is not an indicator of your ability as a marketer. Your ability to sell products, increase brand awareness, and achieve profitable goals is what differentiates a good marketer from a “social media expert”.

This explosion of experts is detrimental to the industry. It muddies the truth, over-hypes what’s possible, and hurts everyone’s credibility.

Thankfully, I foresee this being less of a problem soon. It ties in directly with the first obstacle – accountability. People were drawn to social media because of the lack of accountability. Since you can’t prove ROI, you didn’t have to prove success.

As more and more people demand proper metrics and tracking, less people will be able to fake social media expertise. Hopefully, this change will happen sooner rather than later.

I really want to know what you think the future holds for social media marketing? Will it change marketing? Or is it just a flash in the pan? How do you plan on using it? How do you plan on making differentiating yourself from other “experts”?